


Only Me Shall Reign

by aron_kristina



Category: Norse Religion & Lore
Genre: Gen, introspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 15:11:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1095477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aron_kristina/pseuds/aron_kristina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bound she saw lying, under Hveralund, a monstrous form, to Loki<br/>like. There sits Sigyn, for her consort's sake, not right glad.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Only Me Shall Reign

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AraSigyrn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AraSigyrn/gifts).



> Dear AraSigyrn,
> 
> I hope you like this! It was very fun for me to write, because it meant I could really do some research. I have read the source texts, but I have to admit to using a bit of wikipedia too (sometimes the olde worlde language is too difficult for me to decipher). When it comes to names I've taken the most commonly used (I think) English forms, mostly because they're very close to the Icelandic ones.
> 
> Comments and concrit welcome!

Young maidens dream of being married to kings, princes, important people of wealth and note, they dream of being someone. No maiden ever dreams of spending eternities, and how many she cannot fathom, eternities, with their husband chained to sharp rocks, snakes dripping venom in his eyes. No maiden dreams about having her child killed and from his entrails be forged the chains that bind her husband to the sharp rocks, the father bound by the son. No maiden dreams about her fate, except in the darkest mares of night.

***

He is not her first husband. She is not his first woman.

***

Thinking becomes impossible and unavoidable all at once under the mountain. She can remember Narfi being born, her child, the first time she held him. Her first marriage had been childless, and when she conceived with Loki she was so happy. 

He has a certain peculiarity, her husband, but the child they had together she carried, had insisted. Loki has many children, loved motherhood from the first moment it was even an idea in the head of a beautiful boy child who was taught how to shift his shape and weave enchantments, realizing immediately what uses such practices could have. It is seidr, Sigyn was born a woman and she knows this, but Loki would not admit it, would not admit to any weakness at all. To everyone else he would pretend that he did what he did only out of necessity, even to her at first, but in the caves there are no secrets, only time, and he had admitted. She had cried at first when he spoke of motherhood, of being a woman, of having his children taken away, her own pain so raw, and they had shared that pain, but all they have is time and with time all things fade.

She became a mother the first and only time with Loki, and at times she is jealous. He has children left alive somewhere outside of the cave while all she has are the entrails of her son.

 

Her first husband was not a mean man by most standards, but nor was he very kind. It was a marriage arranged by her mother, she was so young when she got wed, and she did not know about the ways of the world, the ways of men and women. He taught her this, as best as he could, but she would not conceive.

She met Loki in the halls of Odin, a feast was held and she can no longer remember in whose honor it was, just that they were young, drank mead and ran hand in hand to a garden, giggling as they went. They came together then, and Loki promised she would not get with child unless she wanted to. She did want to, but she said no, for she had wanted it to be Loki’s child, and just thinking that was dangerous, carrying another’s child. He left her, and they did not meet again until they were older, wiser perhaps, but not wise enough.

Her husband had left her, and she had left him also, both blaming the other for the lack of children. Had she not remembered Loki’s promise she might have taken all the blame upon her own body, but in this she felt unjustly accused, and so the marriage was no more. She came again into the halls of Odin, and there she saw _him_ again. She had heard about him, his exploits well known and told as stories of amusement and cation, but she did not anticipate that he would remember her, would not have thought they would end up together, this time in a bed in Odin’s palace. They were no longer young, although not old just yet, and they had not drunk much mead, but they still giggled, and when they were found by the bed’s inhabitant it only inspired greater mirth.

***

She is his first wife. He is her first wife too.

***

Being with Loki, being married to Loki, is freedom in its way. She has never cared unduly about propriety, but with Loki every day is an adventure. She never knew what games he would come up with, what plans and schemes he would concoct, what crimes he would be tried for, accused of. She never knew who he was going to get pregnant by, and she found she could not care.

He came to her sometimes in the form of a woman, and she welcomed him into her bed, for she could see him, her husband, in the voluptuous shape of a valkyrie or the sleek muscles of a shield maiden. In all his forms she would recognize her husband, and she would welcome him to her bed with gladness.

There was never any room for sadness and doubt in her bed, it was their most sacred place.

 

Now she will never have that again, never see him as anything other than this again, pained, bleeding, with eyes that get eaten by the poison only to grow back, a never ending cycle.

She knows, of course, that this cycle will end. Even if she did not, she has been told, in detail, the events to come. Odin visits, at times, and sometimes she thinks he takes pleasure in forcing her to listen to it again and again. Her husband will bring along Ragnarök, the end of this world, the end of the reign of the æsir, he will die and she will be left. Odin will die too, and leave his own wife alone, but this does not seem to diminish his pleasure in telling her what he has seen, what he has been told. She wonders, sometimes, why he hates her so, but he hates Loki, and she is Loki’s wife, and such is the role of women, they can inspire no feeling of their own, once they are wed, they can only get the second hand feelings toward their husbands.

She knows all this, and she has cycled through all the emotions possible, all the times possible. She cannot feel any more, this eternity is too long and she cannot break, will not break. She knows all this and she will sit by her husband’s side for as long as it takes, eternity upon eternity, until the time ends and she will go, alone, into the new world.

**Author's Note:**

> Something I forgot to add when I posted: the title is from the song Psalm by Swedish singer (and friend of mine, so I should totally do some PR) Xenia Kriisin. Go listen, all, it's on iTunes and Spotify.


End file.
